Optimization of process variables for reduction of genotoxicity from paper mill effluent

Abstract

In recent years, microbial techniques for wastewater degradation process optimization under laboratory circumstances have piqued the interest of many academics acress the word, prompting them to investigate practical, cost- effective and long-term wastewater treatment technologies. Some workers claim that certain metabolic compounds have mutagenic nature and endocrine disrupting properties. To confirm the degradation and identification of a variety of metabolic products that may have EDC properties, control and bacterial treated samples were analyzed with the help of HPLC and GC-MS.In this study, toxicity assessment (genotoxicity) were performed to confirm the load of various EDCs present in the RGP effluent.Glucose was the most abundant among the carbon sources used as it showed the greatest reduction in colour (61.93%) and COD (57.86%) at 96 hours of the incubation period. However, galactose and sucrose were also found to be very good, allowing 56% color and 48.4% COD reduction. Sodium nitrate, which is an inorganic nitrogen source, played an important role in pulp paper mill effluent decolorization as well as COD reduction. On the other hand, a negative contribution to the color reduction was shown by the inorganic nitrogen source ammonium nitrate.